


the spin of heavenly clockwork

by gendernoncompliant



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Crisis of Faith, Downside cuisine, Found Family, Gen, POV Second Person, Platonic Relationships, Team Bonding, and just a dash of cosmic dread, awkwardly offering comfort, examining the morality of the rites, midgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28647723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendernoncompliant/pseuds/gendernoncompliant
Summary: When the unrelenting pace of revolution has finally slowed to a crawl, will you be able to live with the things you’ve done in the name of freedom?
Relationships: Jodariel/Pamitha Theyn (implied)
Kudos: 2





	the spin of heavenly clockwork

Without the lights of the Commonwealth blotting out the stars, the sky yawns wide and impossible in the Downside.

You heard it said, before you were cast down, that the stars were a beautiful sight. City folk would return from their holidays in the country with their eyes full of celestial light, their smiles huge, and their stories magnificent. They used words like _majestic_ , _breathtaking_ , _humbling_.

But the open sky terrifies you.

There is too much.

As reader for the Nightwings, you found yourself woven into the very tapestry of the stars—learning to read them just as you learned to read the manuscripts you once held so dear. You stand, now, in the Moonlight Alcove, in the wake of your first and most devastating defeat. You know that Ignarius walks the streets of the Commonwealth with his horned head held high, while the rest of you wallow in exile.

 _Humbling_ , indeed.

As the sky gapes wordlessly overhead, you are reminded of the true scope of the world. Of the cosmos.

In retrospect, it seems impossible—comical, even—that you and your friends could have any significance at all when measured against the spin of heavenly clockwork above you. You realize it was foolish to have ever believed yourself to be anything more noble than mere a conduit to that power.

Seated on the lip of the Blackwagon, you search the sky and wonder if Soliam Murr and his Scribes knew anything at all. Heresy, to be sure, but—for all the wisdom of the book, it seems to you like perhaps the Scribes were merely carving shapes from the marble of the universe: assigning their own meaning to some cosmic waltz far beyond their reach or understanding.

You suppose it doesn’t matter, in the end.

If Volfred is to be believed, you’re never getting free of this place. You’ll have a small eternity to grow your horns and ponder the stars.

Seeming to sense your unease, Pamitha peeks out from the wagon before settling beside you. She follows your gaze up into the expanse of black but finds nothing written there. She turns and studies your expression. You feel the focus of her gaze but keep yours pointed at the heavens.

“The Tempers were fast,” she comments, her tone light and unbothered. You haven’t known her long, but you suspect the ease with which she carries herself to be a front. She plays at being disinterested, but it doesn’t ring true. “I suppose Ignarius wasn’t all talk, after all.”

“He was strong,” you sigh in defeated agreement.

She folds her feathered arms up against her chest and kicks at the snow beneath her feet. “Hedwyn said the Nightwings haven’t lost since they found you,” she hums.

You grimace, guilt and dread tangling together. All your victories mean little if you fumble when it counts.

“Rubbing it in?” You bite back.

But Pamitha doesn’t flinch. She bumps your shoulders together. Gently—or as close to gently as Pamitha seems to get, she says, “You were overdue.”

With Volfred’s revolution slowly spinning itself into existence, the Nightwings truly have the weight of the world on your shoulders. But it’s not the world which truly concerns you. It’s not the world which feels so heavy.

It’s them—their hopes, their futures, their lives.

Your friends.

Swallowing around a sudden tightness in your throat, you stare down at the snow at your feet. You think back to Hedwyn, haloed in the light of anointment. The hope on his face. The fear.

“I failed him.”

Pamitha chuckles softly. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” she hums. She nudges your arm and waits for you to look at her. “He’s relieved,” she promises. “He wasn’t ready.”

“He said that?”

She rolls her eyes and aims a grin at that inscrutable sky. “He didn’t have to. You all wear your hearts on your sleeves. It’s sweet.”

“And you?”

She chuckles. “I’m keeping my heart out of this, dear reader.” She pushes herself to her feet, brushing the fine dusting of snow from her shoulders.

You aren’t entirely sure you believe her, but she makes a convincing show of it. “Careful or you’ll freeze over,” she teases with a wry and weightless smile before disappearing back inside the Blackwagon.

The mountain goes silent around you. Even the noise of the wagon at your back seems muffled by the snow. The Downside feels so much emptier than the world above—so much larger, so much quieter.

Behind you, the Fall of Soliam casts a shadow across the entire mountain. The rites treat that place like a temple, but in the wake of your defeat it feels more like a mausoleum.

The longer this goes on, the more you realize just how much you do not know. The book feeds you history in fits and starts. Volfred withholds as much as he reveals. You feel caught up in a kind of mania, a fanaticism you do not fully understand. And the more you learn, the more questions you have.

Unlike the rest of the triumvirates, the Nightwings do not have to fight for their place at the liberation rites. Your spot is guaranteed. You are the benchmark by which all others are judged. Without you, no one goes free.

And for years—until Volfred enlisted the help of Jodariel, Hedwyn, and Rukey—there were no Nightwings.

You think of Lendel and the Accusers—the way his resentment twisted him, how he hung onto the rites not like a man clinging to the shreds of his religion but like a rabid animal latched onto a hunk of meat. Were it not forbidden to spill blood during the rites, you’re sure he would have. At the very least, he’d have thrown an errant elbow into someone’s nose just for the satisfaction of the color on their face.

His hatred comes from a time before you. And yet, the loosed arrow of that hatred sticks in your chest all the same. The Nightwings are the Nightwings are the Nightwings, backwards hundreds of years. Regardless of their faces. Regardless of their stories. Regardless of the life you led before you were thrown from the Commonwealth in a final act of “mercy”.

You feel a kind of warped responsibility for their absence.

You’re knocked from your thoughts by the sound of the Blackwagon’s door opening yet again. This time, Jodariel steps through, ducking her head to clear her horns of the doorframe.

She stands off to the side, stoic and unbothered by the snow, and turns a thoughtful eye on you.

“I’m alright,” you promise—even if it’s perfunctory and untrue. Jodariel ignores you.

“The winged one called you _unsettled_ ,” she rumbles.

There’s still an edge to her voice when she talks about Pamitha, although you’d like to think that her irritation has cooled over time.

(You caught sight of the two of speaking, once, in hushed tones—caught in the midst of an argument gone electric with an entirely different kind of tension. You left them to it, and it was only a few moments more before Jodariel was storming away in a flustered huff, but not before you saw the way they tipped—almost magnetically—towards one another. The way they stopped with mere inches left between them, the way you felt suddenly that you were intruding upon something much more private than a disagreement.)

You offer Jodariel a weak puff of laughter and pull your cloak tighter around your shoulders. You’d be more comfortable inside, but inside you would not be able to see the stars. And for some irrational reason, you feel as if they might change, somehow, without your eyes on them—as though you might miss something important. So, you stay. And you watch, even as the dimly lit sky frightens you.

Unsettled. That’s one word for it.

“She isn’t wrong,” you joke.

Jodariel shifts in the snow, favoring her good leg. You wonder if the old injury causes her pain in the cold.

“You are regretting our loss?” She asks, although she phrases it as though she doesn’t think it a question at all, merely an observation.

You struggle to find your voice. Something shameful lodges in your throat. Staring down at your feet, you murmur, “Is it fair, what we’re doing?”

You don’t have to look at Jodariel to know the thoughtful scowl on her face. “Fair.” She echoes the word as though considering it, as though turning it over in her hands. You can’t bring yourself to look at her.

“No one goes free without us.”

The words hang in the air.

Pamitha would laugh if she heard you talking like that. She’d brush the feathers of her clipped wing against your cheek and accuse you of having your head further in the clouds than any harp she ever met. Volfred would find you unpractical, your hypothetical ethical quandary nothing but a hindrance to the revolution he’s been brewing. Hedwyn would buoy you with promises that your course is just and right.

Jodariel lets the words settle over her. After a silence that stretches so thin it begins to feel as though it might snap, she carefully comments, “You’re taking a great deal of weight on those shoulders.”

She was a captain, once. A strategist. She understands how to step back and consider the consequences of every action. Surely the thought crossed her mind at least once.

“The Scribes said the rites were a mercy,” you argue, half frantic with it now that the words have finally spilled from your mouth. “But how is this merciful? The Nightwings are guarding the gates. We’re the ones standing in the way of everyone else.”

 _They gave their freedom that we might yet have ours_ —those are the words your companions speak, your adversaries, even the Voice. Words offered up in something like prayer before each rite. If you are the triumvirate against which all others are judged, if their only chance at escape lies in your hands, is it not cruel then to take that freedom for yourself?

“They gave their freedom,” you murmur, echoing it hopelessly. “Isn’t _that_ what’s right?”

“ _They_ were Scribes,” Jodariel points out. You notice she does not apply quite the same reverence to the word— _Scribes_ —as the others. “We wear their raiments, but we are not the same. We deserve our freedom same as any other.”

Guilt crawls up your throat and into your mouth when you remember the horns that curl from her head. You wonder at the weight of them.

She regards you warily. Your question opened the door to doubt and it festers in you both.

“Are you still with us, reader?” Jodariel asks. There’s an edge to her voice, although it lands somewhere between hostile and hurt. Jodariel is, as always, steady and unshakeable and yet—

You know she fears your answer. You’d never be able to best Jodariel in combat. But in this arena, you could strike a heavy blow. You could lean into your doubt and she would still fight alongside you, but things would be changed—irreparably. The understanding of this rattles you.

“Always, Jodariel,” you promise. “Until the end.”

She meets your gaze with a solemn expression. You both know, now, that the “end” no longer includes you. It never did. But you will earn the rest of them their freedom.

Your belief in the cause has never wavered—and the cause has always been the future of your friends. Volfred’s revolution secures that future, builds that future bigger and brighter. But _they_ are the core tenant of your faith, surer than any book, any ritual, any rite.

After a long quiet, Jodariel makes a _tch_ of understanding and puffs out a quiet sigh. “You fear they’ll think you monstrous, when this is over. The other triumvirates.”

You do your best to fake a smile, but neither of you believe it. “I’ll be the one living down here with them, after all,” you joke.

Jodariel is only half right. You fear your own judgement, your own guilt as much as any triumvirate’s ire. When the unrelenting pace of revolution has finally slowed to a crawl, will you be able to live with the things you’ve done in the name of freedom?

Jodariel gets to her feet. She is not exactly gentle but also not particularly rough when she plants a hand between your shoulder blades and shoves you, stumbling, towards the stairs of the Blackwagon.

“Inside, reader,” she instructs. The words ring out firm but kind—kind in her own, prickly way that you’ve grown fonder of the longer you’ve known her. “It is too cold out here.”

“But the stars—” you try to argue.

She merely steers you up the steps and shakes her head. “—Will remain quiet a while longer,” she finishes for you.

As soon as you cross the threshold, the chill that pinched your fingers buckles into heat. The magma mug from the Black Basin glows brightly from its place on the shelf, blanketing the room in a supernatural warmth. You give in to the urge to old your hands up to it.

Inside, the Lone Minstrel sits against the wall and plucks softly at his lute. Volfred sits reading, huddled beside him. Tariq’s music underscores the sounds of Rukey’s voice and of Sir Gilman slithering restlessly across the Blackwagon floor.

As soon as she catches sight of you, Pamitha casts you an exasperated look over Rukey’s furry shoulder. He’s trapped her in a conversation about Commonwealth fineries that she clearly has no interest in. You hide your smile in the shadow of your hood while she fakes interest in his explanation of how to tell a quality rug from a counterfeit.

Hedwyn beams from the doorway to the kitchen, a mixing bowl tucked under his arm. He winks conspiratorially at you. “They’ve been like that since she came back in.”

You return his grin. “Surely you could have rescued her.”

“Aye,” he agrees warmly. “I could have.”

The both of you bubble with laughter that chases away the last of the cold. He nods his head in the direction of the kitchen. From within it, you hear humming. “I’ve been teaching Rhae to make a broth from the ichor of the Gluehive. Come have some. Warm you up.” He brushes the snow from your shoulders.

“Reader!” Rhae cheers brightly as you step into the room. From his place perched on her shoulder, Ti’zo squaws in matching delight.

Rhae gestures to the Blackwagon’s walls. “Little brother told me you’ve been speaking with the stars! What did they say?”

Maybe if there had been the glow of a guiding star in the sky to lead the Nightwings to the next rite, you would not have had so much time to spend alone in your own head, weighing the morality of a system far beyond you.

“The stars were quiet, I’m afraid,” you tell her, with as much levity to your voice as you can muster.

Rhae nods as if this answer doesn’t surprise her in the least. “They’re sleeping, I think,” she decides. “They work hard during the rites.”

It seems strangely insightful. “Yes,” you agree, “I suppose they do.”

Tired of the stars and their unknowable inclinations, you gesture to the spoon in Rhae’s hand. “How goes the soup?”

She bubbles with excitement. “Very good, I think!” She looks to Hedwyn. “Right?”

He grins at her. “It looks perfect,” he assures. “It’s ready for the cinderroot, now.” He nudges a cutting board loaded with finely diced vegetables her direction.

Hedwyn’s recipe puzzles you—although, they always do. The ingredients of the Downside are as bizarre as they are scarce. That Hedwyn’s able to cobble them together into tasteful dishes at all baffles and impresses you.

You’d tried your hand at keeping bees back in the Commonwealth but lost your first hive to an outbreak of stonebrood. You were cast to the Downside before you could build yourself a second. The Gluehives of the Downside had looked much like overblown beehives—more feral, of course. Wilder. Less orderly—something caught between the winding spires of a termite mound and the careful scaffolding of a honeycomb, but familiar all the same.

You peer over the bubbling pot. “Wouldn’t the ichor be too sweet for a soup?” you ask.

Hedwyn makes a puckered face and shakes his head. “No, it’s different from honey. It’s waxy and—” He chuckles. “Well, it stinks. But a spoonful in your stock deepens the flavor.”

“But you have to get it just right,” Rhae interrupts. She balances the line between gleeful and serious, stirring the broth with the utmost focus. “Or the whole pot goes sour.”

Hedwyn nods along with her. “It’s easy to burn,” he clarifies.

“Yes, and it stinks the whole wagon when it does,” Jodariel comments wryly from behind you. You did not realize she’d followed you through to the kitchen, but when she settles in the corner, you find yourself grateful for the comfort of her presence. She heaves a toothlessly exasperated sigh. “It is not worth it for musky soup.”

Hedwyn laughs easy and unbothered. It’s a game between the two of them—a fight with no stakes and no consequences. “It is… an acquired taste,” Hedwyn concedes. He lifts a jar of it to show you. The ichor bears the same golden amber of honey, but cloudy colored and lumpy—more like a mustard than a syrup.

Hedwyn dips a finger in it and extends it to Ti’zo, who goes after the ichor with such enthusiasm he nearly takes Hedwyn’s finger off along with it. Dancing backwards with a yelp and a laugh, Hedwyn shakes out his hand and wipes his fingers on his apron. Jordariel’s deep chuckle booms through the small space. Rhae beams.

“Ti’zo is truly the fiercest imp in the Downside,” Rhae declares and Ti’zo puffs out his little chest and preens.

The chaos settles and Hedwyn rings the bell to alert the others. Everyone streams into the small kitchen and settles around the table, much more crowded now than it once was. Their chatter fills the wagon. It chases away the last shivers of cold. Whatever doubts you might have had dissipate like mist.

You would do anything for them. For this.

Your family.

You will see them home.

You will give your freedom that they might yet have theirs.


End file.
